


Big Blue Eyes

by SilentProtagonist000



Category: South Park
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Drama, Explicit Language, M/M, Romance, Tragedy, Yaoi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-09
Updated: 2014-07-15
Packaged: 2018-02-08 04:55:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1927401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilentProtagonist000/pseuds/SilentProtagonist000
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kyle Broflovski has graduated from Harvard medical school with his doctorate and is offered a job in hospice care back home in South Park in order to pay off his crippling student debt. His first patient is his childhood friend, Stan Marsh, who has early-onset Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s. Kyle realizes that for the first time, he can’t fix his best friend. Multichaptered. Incomplete.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Hi, guys! I'm brand-new to AO3, but I've been writing fanfiction for years and dabbled a bit on other websites. I am currently moving this story to AO3 to be enjoyed by audiences here as well as elsewhere on the Internet. I may move some of my other works here as well, but I'm currently undecided on that. 
> 
> Here is the first chapter of Big Blue Eyes! Please enjoy. 
> 
> \--Silent--Protagonist

_Not long ago._

Kyle couldn’t stand it anymore. By the time he’d been going there every afternoon for the past six months, he thought he was going to burn down the fucking nursing home, he swore to God. If there was one thing he couldn’t stand in medical school, it was nursing homes. It all seemed pointless to him—locking a mass of equally deteriorating people into one building and hoping staffing issues and neglect didn’t cause an incident to occur. To him, it was nothing but a cesspool of bedsores, fall risks, and general unhappiness. He didn’t know how anybody lived there. He didn’t know how anybody had the gall to put someone there and just leave them alone.

According to the charge nurse on that particular morning, Stan had another pressure ulcer forming on his coccyx. “It’s a Stage 3,” she told him blandly, absorbed in another patient’s chart and refusing to make eye contact. Her legs were crossed, clad in a shade of baby blue scrub pants that Kyle thought was the ugliest pair he’d ever seen. “Apparently it’s been there for a while, but none of the staff has seen it. One of your hospice nurses is doing wound care twice a week.”

Kyle slammed his hands down on the nurse’s station’s front desk. “Has nobody been repositioning him?” he demanded. “What kind of joke is this? The whole point of this facility is to keep your residents in good health, and I come to hear my patient has a bed sore? A Stage 3, no less? That means he’s been on it for ages without anyone keeping him on his side. What the hell are your nurse aides doing on the floor?”

As he assumed, Kyle’s inflammatory remark had pulled a chord—he knew the true trigger of registered nurses, and that was criticizing their authority. The charge nurse’s gaze snapped up, her dark eyes boring flaming holes into his skin. Kyle knew what was best, and that was to stand his ground and glare back. “Excuse me, _Doctor Broflovski_ , but I think I know what I’m doing here,” she hissed. “Don’t act like I’m the only nurse on call all the time. It’s not my fault.”

 _Sure it isn’t._ Kyle hated not only nursing homes, but sometimes, the people who worked in them. “Then maybe while you’re working, you can get the aides to make sure his skin isn’t breaking down,” he seethed. “Pressure ulcers are a sign of neglect, and you know damn well I’m right.”

“Do you know how hard it is to reposition him?” the charge nurse asked. “He’s got Parkinson’s rigor so badly that none of his limbs will move. The physical therapists have even given up on him. Range of motion exercises do nothing. He’s dying, Doctor. There’s only so much we can do at this point.” She veered her sight back down to the chart, flipping through with a renewed vigor. Kyle, as usual, had gotten nowhere, so he decided to play his trump card.

“You have nice scrubs,” he complimented, lying blatantly.

The charge nurse ignored him.

Sniffing, Kyle bent down and grabbed the handle to his rolling bag and turned down the dimly-lit hallway. The nursing home turned off half the lights in the afternoon to save electricity, which Kyle thought was utter bullshit. No wonder this was the second bed sore Stan had gotten in the last six months. Kyle couldn’t be by his side all the time, or he would have ensured his joke of a treatment wouldn’t have happened. Hindsight was always clear, and the longer Kyle stuck around in palliative care, the longer he wished he’d been a nurse instead. He could be closer to his patients.

He could’ve been closer to Stan.

Stan Marsh lived at the very end of the north wing of South Park’s sole long-term care facility—he was the youngest resident there by at least thirty years. Stacked up against many of his older tenants, he was comparatively worse, too. This dismal thought cast Kyle’s vision to the floor, watching the tiles flash by as he walked briskly down the corridor, the wheels of his bag clacking stolidly behind him. He brushed by a nursing assistant who had just emerged from a nearby room with a trash can filled with what smelled like vomit. Stan’s neighbor, an elderly woman whose name Kyle couldn’t recall, had been having emesis for weeks. When Kyle started seeing Stan, she was always hitting on him.

_What was her name again?_

As usual, Stan’s door was wide open. The charge nurses always commanded this in case they needed to reach him quickly to do emergency care. Stan’s door was the only one ajar in the entire wing. And as usual, the lights were off and the shades drawn. Without announcing his presence, Kyle stepped over the threshold and into the black room, allowing the darkness to swallow him. As he fumbled at the wall for a light switch, he glanced over in the general direction of Stan’s bed. Amongst the inky shade, he saw the outline of a figure scuffle, shifting softly in his sheets.

“Hey, kiddo,” he said sofly. “I’m going to turn on a light, okay?” No response. As usual. Kyle turned the light on.

The first thing he saw were Stan’s big, round eyes staring at him from the bed, blue and vast as the ocean and his pupils fat. He was like an owl. Kyle knew for a fact that Stan never slept, no matter how much clonazepam the nurses forced into his system. His Parkinson’s caused severe spasms that kept him roused for hours. The bags above his cheekbones reflected this. Or maybe it was the loud purr of Stan’s oxygen machine, which was kept running on four liters continuously. Four liters was unheard of. Most people were on two, at the very most. Stan had been clinging with four for a while now.

Wheeling his bag to the side of Stan’s hospital bed, Kyle pulled up the single guest chair in Stan’s barren, desolate room, lacking in everything personal except the white paint that kept the walls startlingly bright. His family never visited him anymore—his parents had died ages ago, and God only knew what happened to his sister. She was always a wreck, even in their childhood. “Do you want your blinds open?” Kyle inquired.

Stan gazed up at him, unresponsive. Kyle knew him well enough, though. There was a silent “yes” communicated between them.

Before sitting down, Kyle threw back the shades, allowing natural sunlight to wash the room in its glow and warmth. For a second, Kyle could have sworn that the corner of Stan’s mouth curled up into a ghost of a smile. Yet in spite of the sun, Kyle felt suddenly cold and had to draw his white lab coat around his forest green scrubs. Hurrying back from the window, he plopped down beside his friend and patient with earnest.

“Let’s see,” he said, rifling in his bag for all the necessary equipment. “I’m going to just do a routine check up on that new bed sore. Is that all right with you?” Kyle didn’t wait for an answer. He hadn’t gotten one for about three weeks now. But when he turned back to Stan, cloth tape and wet gauze in hand, he saw that Stan looked mildly content. There was no change in expression—he couldn’t express his emotions anymore, because they were all but gone, in all scientific definitions of his disease progress—but Kyle could still pretend that Stan was happy, even if his huge-eyed fawning and straight lips never shifted.

Swallowing the lump in his throat, Kyle forced a grin and ruffled Stan’s black hair. “I’m going to uncover you, so it may be a little chilly for a second.” Standing, Kyle pulled back the sheets and tried not to look too hard at Stan’s crumpled, malnourished form. His limbs were drawn up to his chest, gnarled with arthritis and unmoving due to his Parkinson’s. Rigor was very common in those patients, Kyle had noticed. Various towels were shoved between his extremities to reduce skin damage—the aides had even put washcloths in both of Stan’s hands to keep his fingernails from cutting into his palms. The aides weren’t dressing him anymore, either. Stan was clad in only a white adult brief, changed only when he soiled himself. Kyle had rallied for him to get an indwelling catheter, but his condition had made inserting one too difficult. There wasn’t a stench, so Stan was clean. Kyle was somewhat relieved—he hadn’t changed someone’s brief since he’d been in high school, taking a nurse aide course.

After snapping on a pair of laytex gloves, Kyle turned him gently to one side and cursed silently at the charge nurse for making up excuses about Stan being too hard to manage for positioning. “I should have that bitch and her nasty-ass scrubs written up,” he growled. What unprofessional language, he thought bitterly. Not that he cared when he was around Stan. If he’d had half his mind about him, he was sure his friend would have snickered. “Sorry, Stan.” Stan didn’t respond, but twitched slightly, as if to reassure Kyle it was fine.

“Yuck,” Kyle commented when he saw the large, festering wound on Stan’s lower back. The sore was deep and an angry red, the dead skin around it caked in yellow and black pus. Mumbling under his breath, Kyle fished out a paper ruler to measure the diameter of the sore. “Three centimeters in width and one in length,” he said. “That’s not too big, at least. But you could keep treasure in this one, Stan. The cops would never find it.” He dressed the wound quickly and kept Stan on his good side, propping him up with pillows and exposing the dressing to the door. “I’ll write an order for a wound vac on this one. Your hospice nurse will have fun with that.”

Kyle walked around toward the window, where Stan was now facing, and placed the pulse oximeter on Stan’s left index finger. “Breathe deeply for me, now.” Kyle saw Stan’s chest rise and fall much more noticeably. Kyle swore at anyone who believed Alzheimer’s patients understood nothing. _They_ understood nothing.

As the pulse oximeter got a reading, Kyle felt a gentle tug on his lab coat. Stan’s grip had slackened on the washcloth bundle and had now latched himself onto Kyle’s clothing, holding steadfast, as if he refused to let go. His eyes were locked on Kyle, as if analyzing every freckle on his face and every strand of wild, curly red hair on his head. For a minute, Kyle met his gaze. Unlike the charge nurse, Kyle could stare at Stan forever. Even like this, Stan’s face was exactly the same.

Many things changed, but some things never did.

 _Beep_. The pulse oximeter blinked. _89._

“Breathe a little more for me, Stan,” Kyle said. “It has to be at least 90 for your oxygen level to be okay. Breathe deeper.”

Stan’s eyes were glassy. They never moved.

_88._


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kyle is saddled with debt after graduating from medical school and must find a way to pay it off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's a short-ass chapter.

_Six months ago._

“One hundred and twenty thousand dollars.” The loan executive’s voice was a taut drone, and the dull tone pierced Kyle’s heart. The ceiling fan above the desk in the small, cramped office became a soundless whir, drowned out by the pounding in Kyle’s chest. He was still wearing a stethoscope around his neck—he’d run here amid the lunch rush from Boston General just down the street. Regardless, it had taken him ten minutes to get here from a block away by foot. If there was one thing Kyle could never get used to, it was the massive throngs of milling people in large cities. He hated the rumor mill and the endless space at home, but he was a bit lonely in Boston. Maybe he wasn’t a big city doctor.

Maybe he wasn’t, but he was trying to be.

“What?” Kyle gasped, his throat constricting. He wanted to bend himself over the chair and thrust until he cleared his airway of whatever invisible object was choking him. Actually, he knew it was the lump sum that had taken his breath so violently. _A hundred and twenty… thousand?_

The loan executive peered up at him from beneath her bifocals, her pursed, beak-shaped lips moving jadedly. Kyle worried for a moment if she could hear his heartbeat from his stethoscope. “That’s how much you owe our private company in student loans for your eight-year doctorate, Doctor Broflovski,” she said. “It’s common to see debt this high from young physicians, but we need some kind of reassurance that you’ll even pay.” She scribbled something on a piece of paper, seemingly displeased by Kyle’s gawking. “The promissory note you filled out prior to entering university has been lost by the system, so there is no longer any legal document binding you to your debt. Technically, Doctor, your debt is illegal.”

Kyle’s mouth went dry instantly. The financial terms swam around in his head like a school of incompetent fish, trying desperately to connect information from one synapse to another. His father was a lawyer—why hadn’t he studied any of this? He was twenty-seven years old, and yet he had the monetary comprehension of a sixth grader, regardless of the fact that he’d been handling his own budget since he’d started college. “I swear, my father signed it when I was a freshman,” he said hurriedly. “I was still a dependent back then. I had no legal ability to—”

“Then contact your father, Doctor Broflovski,” the loan executive deadpanned, unsympathetic. For some reason, Kyle couldn’t stop staring at the wart on the end of her hooked nose. It made him sick, as was what he was anticipating she would say. “We either need a copy of your promissory note with your promise to start submitting payments, or you’ll be sent to prison for defaulting on your loan.”

“What—no! You can’t do that!” Kyle snapped. “For God’s sake, I was a minor! I was only seventeen when I began getting my medical degree! Harvard wasn’t cheap! I don’t even know if my father kept a copy! Please, I--”

The loan executive’s glare was steely cold. Kyle felt frozen with fear. He was a mouse trapped in a snake’s paralyzing path. He had wanted to become a doctor, and now he was being severely punished for pursuing his dreams. “You aren’t a minor anymore, Doctor,” she snarled. “You have been of complete independence since your twenty-fifth birthday. If your father cannot procure a copy of the note, you have one year to pay at least half of your loan back or risk incarceration.”

Kyle was a resident intern at Boston General, and he hadn’t even made sixty thousand dollars since graduation last fall. New doctors were notorious for being paid peanuts, even in metropolitan areas, and he knew for a fact he wouldn’t be able to make enough to pay back even half the amount until he had completed his residency. His father was old—he was keeping documents less and less. He had retired last year from being a lawyer, as his and Sheila’s income had made them comfortable. Even though Kyle was middle class and his grades were stellar enough in high school to land him a reserved seat at Harvard medical school, he’d received no scholarships, sans a small one for his Jewish faith. He borrowed nearly every cent he paid Harvard in tuition and fees, and worked off the rest in a work-study program.

Unless he could pull something out of his ass, Kyle knew he was doomed. Doomed to failure; doomed to no longer be the big city doctor he’d always wanted to be. _I knew I should’ve listened to Dad when he told me not to take out loans with a privately-owned firm,_ he thought bitterly. Hindsight was always clear. Goddamn, he really should have been a nurse.

“However,” the loan executive said, and a ray of sunshine uplifted Kyle and he raised his head from its cradled position in his forlorn hands. “There is another way. Did you specialize in medical school? What are you a doctor of?”

“Oh,” Kyle said. “I was in general practice.”

The loan executive clicked her tongue. “A dime a dozen,” she said, “but I suppose there’s always a place. Our firm is a partner with a travelling medical agency that posts doctors and nurses in underserved areas to meet the medical needs of the local population. It just so happens a place opened up somewhere in the Midwest. A hospice company is in need of a physician to see patients.” Opening up a center drawer, she rifled about in search of something. Kyle leaned over and saw her oakwood desk was very cluttered with papers, staplers, and pens on the inside. She seemed very orderly, as nothing but a desk calendar and a lamp with a crack in the stand sat on the surface.

“Ah, here it is,” she said, removing a yellow slip of paper from the maelstrom. “The hospice is Hospice of the Range, and it’s based out of Hells Pass Hospital in South Park, Colorado. Their sole physician quit last month. They’ve been searching for a replacement without much luck.”

_South Park._ Kyle became queasy at the thought of the snowy mountain town he’d grown up in, with its bland people and mysterious events. He could only remember truly liking his two childhood friends Stan and Kenny; not even his own parents tickled his fancy. They were constantly fixated either on their careers or too much on him. When he’d gone to Boston, he was adamant that he would never return there. Too many memories. Too much idiocy.

_Too much fire, and not enough snow._ Kyle felt sick again at that thought.

The loan executive ignored his silence and continued, as if stuck on a broken record, jumping its scratch. “If you take this offer and work at this hospice for one year, half of your debt will be forgiven. Of course, you will still have to pay the other half eventually, but you will be exempt from all penalties after that point. You have until retirement to pay back the remaining sixty thousand.” She placed the paper on the desk and slid it across to Kyle, tapping her manicured fingernails on it expectantly. “I’m assuming your answer will be yes, seeing as you have no other alternative.”

Yes, he had no other alternative, but _God no I do not want to do this,_ he cried mentally. He had wanted to leave everybody behind in that dreary, heartless place, and instead, that was exactly where he was returning. And in hospice, no less! He wouldn’t have minded opening his own practice and assisting the town as a family practitioner, but he had to call on the dying—hospice care was reserved for terminally ill patients who had a prognosis of less than six months. He had spent some time shadowing in a hospice in west Boston as a part of his medical training, but he’d hated it. There was a lingering scent of fatalism everywhere he walked, clinging from the staff to the family to the patients. People died both without any preamble and with far too much. There was no telling who would improve or who would suddenly deteriorate. Christ, he could handle acute emergency care better than hospice. There might have been more blood, but less emotional baggage. Hospice seemed to take forever. Kyle didn’t know if he was ready for that.

But… then again, he was one hundred and twenty thousand dollars in debt.

And he had to escape his mistakes somehow.

“Yes,” he responded after a prolonged pause. “You’re right. I’ll do it. I’ll take the position.”

* * *

_He was seventeen, and somehow, he couldn’t forget it. He couldn’t erase the way the flames jumped at the sky, licking the shimmering stars with the patience of a child out of his mind. He couldn’t delete the screams from his memory. No matter how hard he scrubbed, he couldn’t wash away the eternal stench of death and ash from his skin._

_Within the last six months, Kyle wished he could be more like Stan._

_He wished he had some way to forget._


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kyle visits Kenny, who is now the proprietor of a funeral home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the formatting in this chapter; it was wonky and I couldn't fix it.

_Not long ago._

 

Kenny was now the owner and proprietor of the McCormick Funeral Home (formerly the less personal South Park Area Funeral Home) and, as Kyle observed as he entered the mortuary from the front door, he had made a fair living out of it. The dank scent of death masked by flowery perfume hung in the air, with a discernible brush of snickerdoodles--Kenny's favorite cookie--lingering quietly as an afterthought. But the front lobby was lavishly furnished with elaborately carved coffee tables, ornate carpeting, and gleaming brown leather couches, their cushions roomy and comfortable. Kyle was so exhausted from his visit with Stan that he wanted to sink into one and disappear endlessly. He feared the minute he closed his eyes, he would drift away and never wake up.

 

Fortunately, Kenny heart the chiming of the bell signaling Kyle's entrance from a hidden back room, as he emerged not two minutes after Kyle had set foot inside the decorative parlor. "Com-ing!" Kenny called in a warm, sing-song-y voice as he swung through a small door leading away from the lounge. A white apron with a rainbow of unidentifiable splotches was tied around his neck and waist, covering the black suit and red tie that he was wearing underneath. His blue eyes gleamed with curiosity and interest, alive with the energy and consciousness Stan lacked. It hurt Kyle, in a way, to see the same dull color in his friend be vibrant in another.

 

"I'm sorry, it's past closing hours," Kenny said, his eyes skirting over Kyle, not registering the identity of his old comrade. "I could've sworn I locked that--" When his gaze met Kyle and absorbed his figure--green scrubs, white lab coat, weathered sneakers, and rolling bag--Kenny's friendly but businesslike facade cracked into a wide, excited smile. "Dude, Kyle!" He cried, rushing forward and throwing his arms around the doctor. "It's been ages!" 

 

Kyle halfheartedly embraced him in return, nearly gagging at the musk that clung to Kenny. "You reek like death and formaldehyde," he observed. "Let me go." 

 

Chuckling, Kenny stepped away. "You smell like old people and medicine," he retorted. "I can't believe I didn't recognize that shock of red hair at first. I guess it's been a long day. Two funerals and three cremations, and it's barely past six in the evening." He scanned Kyle's attire. "Didn't flunk out of Harvard med, I see."

 

Kyle rolled his eyes and smirked. He'd never been very close to Kenny, but they had grown up together, and Kyle considered that enough to warrant a visit. "Of course not," he scoffed. "I'm surprised you even went to college, man." Playful bullying had been a part of his, Kenny's, and Stan's relationship since youth. They teased each other as young men were wont to do, and it never really bothered any of them. 

 

"First in the McCormick family to graduate!" Kenny cheered, lifting his hand for a high-five. Kyle gave him a light smack on the hand, still not able to look too long at his wild blond hair and iridescent indigo eyes. "I'm making more than all of them combined. And I'm doing it honestly, too. Can't say my parents were that proud, but at least I am. They're all assholes, anyway." 

 

"It's a fitting profession for you," Kyle stated. "After all the near-death experiences you had as a kid." Kenny had come from a broken home and suffered radically through poverty during most of his childhood and adolescence, plagued with abusive, drug-addled parents and violent sibling rivalry as the middle child. He was troublesome as well--getting caught selling meth on behalf of his family, stealing cheap porn magazines, and catching probably every STD known to man (as Kyle investigated as a lame university project halfway through his masters' degree). So it was a surprise to everyone in the community when Kenny McCormick suddenly cleaned up his act during his last two years of high school, achieved above-average grades, and ended up going to mortuary school north of Denver. He came home to South Park and inherited the local funeral home from the crotchety old fogey that last owned it, and he was making a decent living off it.

 

If no one else, at least Kyle was happy for him. Kenny was proof that obstacles could be overcome. Despite his prestigious education, Kyle wasn't quite sure if he could say the same for himself.

 

Kenny gestured to the door he had emerged from. "Hey, come on back and we'll catch up," he said. "I'm embalming a body right now, and I've got to get it done before the end of the night. It's a four-pointer so far, so it'll take me a while."

 

What's a four-pointer? Kyle wondered, but the immediate thought of a body made him grimace. He'd had plenty of nightmares from cadavers in medical school--gray-faced and stiff with skin as tough as an elephant's. Dead bodies disgusted him. "Uh, I don't think that's allowed," he said. "You know. Confidentiality and HIPAA and all that."

 

Kenny frowned. "Dude, you're a doctor," he pointed out. "It's fine. Why are you so white?"

 

"Probably just tired," Kyle lied. "Long day at hospice."

 

"Well, they're almost dead, then," Kenny shrugged. He pivoted on his heel and made haste to the door, glancing over his shoulder to see if Kyle was following. "You coming?" 

 

Reluctantly, Kyle left his bag by the front entrance and trailed Kenny down a short hallway and into a cramped room that closely resembled a hospital's surgery wing that Kyle had seen countless times. A blinding fluorescent light illuminated the sterile floors, walls, and cabinets that held a variety of instruments similar to those Kyle had seen and used before in his own career. The only striking difference was a plastic table in the very center of the room, the curled form of a drastically overweight woman lying upon it. Two incisions were prominent on either side of her neck and on the inside of both elbows, her arms supine to the ceiling. A hose with a steady stream of water poured from beside her, a urinal-like contraption at the end of the table catching the overflow. Kyle was quick to avert his gaze.

 

"Keeled over from congestive heart failure," Kenny said, speaking of the deceased woman on his table. He snapped on a pair of gloves and handed Kyle some as well to participate, but he declined. "Growing up malnourished, I can't really fathom clogged arteries. You sure you don't want to pal around?"

 

"I'm good," Kyle said, glad he hadn't gotten around to eating dinner yet. 

 

Kenny went back over to the table and set back to work washing and pumping fluid through the body. "So tell me, Dr. Hoity-Toity," he began, "how did you end up back here when you swore you'd never set foot in this place ever again?" 

 

"Student loans," Kyle reported. "I'm with a company that sends me to underserved areas to work so I can pay them off. Apparently, South Park was one of them." 

 

"Sucks to suck," Kenny snickered. "I was poor enough that I went to school for free."

 

"You went to community college," Kyle said begrudgingly. "I went to a school that cost nearly eighty grand per year."

 

"Your problem," Kenny responded blandly, and Kyle realized he was right. He probably could have gone to Denver and gotten an equally airtight medical degree at an equally accredited institution, but of course, his parents had emphatically stressed that no son of theirs was going to settle for a state college. He worried a bit for his adopted brother Ike's future, but he supposed that was out of his control. 

 

Kenny had a point--he could have prevented his student debt and his current mediocre position for the sake of repaying it. He could have rejected his parents' insistence and gone on his own path. He could have.

 

Then again, he feared what would have come of Stan if he hadn't. 

 

"A few people have contacted me, wondering what the hell happened to you," Kenny said, disrupting Kyle's tranquil mulling as he procured some soap from an apron pocket and started fiercely scrubbing the body. "Craig, for one. He and Tweekers ended up in Los Angeles with a tattoo parlor. I can imagine Craig doing something like that, but Tweek? How the hell did he end up pricking people's skin for a living? I'd guess the mere sight of a needle makes him nervous, but clearly not."

 

"Who knows?" Kyle said hollowly, though he was almost certain that Tweek Tweak had followed the path for Craig, not himself. The two had become nearly inseparable during high school--likely due to their poor home lives--and though they never became public with their relationship, everyone was sure there was something other than diligent friendship present between them. Craig's aloof, antisocial personality complimented Tweek's constant nervousness quite well, and they offset one another when one got out of hand. Kyle wasn't surprised. If he'd known Stan was so sick before going to medical school, he would've had a reason for pursuing his field. 

 

"Cartman, too," Kenny said, causing Kyle to flinch, a knee-jerk reaction that he'd developed to hearing his old nemesis's name. Kenny glanced up to see his displeasure and laughed. "That little shit wants to be president, you know? He told me when he called last week." Venturing over to a set of cabinets to retrieve heavy string and large sewing needle, Kenny snorted once. "He shut up that shtick when I made fun of him for working in a dead-end desk job."

 

Kyle paled to imagine a country run by the egotistical bully that was Eric Cartman. Majoring in political science was not one of Cartman's brightest ideas, as he only had so much charisma and influence outside of South Park. "It's a relief to know he isn't actually achieving that right now," Kyle said. "I'd hope he'd be assassinated halfway through his first term." 

 

"Earlier than than." Kenny looped the string through the eye of the needle and began stitching the left neck incision with surgical precision. "Haven't heard anything from Stan, though, but I assume you've kept up with him?" Kyle barely heard him voice that as a question, and only when his curious blue state met his did he realize what Kenny was asking. 

 

The aroma of embalming fluid seemed much more powerful all of a sudden, and it burned the inside of Kyle's nose like bleach. "W-What do you mean, you assume I've kept up with him?" He stammered. He was wary to answer Kenny's inquiry; he was not only prohibited from disclosing information about his patients, but he was almost afraid to admit it out loud, even though he'd been Stan's caregiver for the last six months. 

 

_He's--_

 

"I mean, you've always been butt buddies." Kenny interrupted Kyle's thoughts once more, and Kyle cursed himself for thinking so heavily. "You two are total fags. Not that that's a bad thing, I mean. Everyone just figured you were gay for each other since birth, and the Wendy thing was a cover-up." Kenny finished the stitch and moved to the other side of the corpse to continue his work. "I was hoping you two kept in touch, being best homos and everything, and Stan went to college after--"

 

"Stan's dying," Kyle blurted before he could control himself. "Kenny, Stan's living here. In the nursing home. He'll die any day now. It's jus a matter of time."

 

Silence. Kenny's grip on his sewing needle slackened and the metal instrument clattered lightly to the ground, the attached string falling with it like a thin waterfall. Kenny gaped up at Kyle with utter disbelief, as if death were a completely new concept to this funeral director. Kyle anticipated a slew of rushed questions, but instead, Kenny threw back his head and barked out a forced but convincingly hearty laugh. Blinking, Kyle gawked at Kenny's odd response as the blond wiped tears of mirth away from his cheeks. 

 

"Ha! Ha ha! Good one, dude!" He chortled. "You really got me. I almost bought that for a second. Seriously, though. What's Stan doing with himself these days? You don't have to be an asshole."

 

It was Kyle's grim scowl that diminished Kenny's cheerful grin. "I'm not kidding," the doctor affirmed softly. "Go to the nursing home if you don't believe me. You won't like what you see." Kyle met Kenny's eyes again and was instantly reminded of Stan and flickered his gaze to the wall to the right of Kenny's cheek. "I'm his doctor. I'm the only one he's got left." 

 

Kyle gathered the courage to look at Kenny's face again, whose handsome features were drained of all color, resembling the body on the table before him. "Shit," he swore, strangely gentle. "Fuck." Kenny bent over and picked up the sewing needle and tossed it bitterly on the cadaver. "Why the fuck didn't I know this? I've been there to pick up bodies for months now. I'm such a dumbass."

 

"I'm sorry," Kyle apologized. He wasn't sure what for. I'm sorry. He sounded seventeen again. The temperature in the already frigid room seemed even colder. 

 

"What does he have?" Kenny demanded to know. 

 

"Kenny, you should be aware that I can't tell you," Kyle said. "I'm his doctor. I have to keep his condition secret for his dignity."

 

"That's fucking bullshit, and you know it," Kenny snapped. "Who's going to hear us, congestive heart failure woman? She's mega dead. Stan is my friend, for Chrissake. Please, Kyle." 

 

Anything regarding Stan made Kyle crack too easily, and coupled win Kenny's pleading, Kyle breached professional behavior for the second time that day. "Parkinson's and Alzheimer's," he sighed. 

 

Kenny frowned deepy. "Alzheimer's? What the hell? Stan isn't even thirty. What's he doing with that?"

 

"It's possibly genetic," Kyle said. "Or a result of--"

 

"The accident?" Kenny finished the sentence Kyle was afraid to complete. In a flash of internal flame, Kyle could almost smell the smoke and taste the ash as if he were a senior in high school once more. It had happened so long ago, and he knew Stan had repressed his memories of the incident. But though he sustained no personal casualties, Kyle had done his best to forget. 

 

But he couldn't. He could never forget. It haunted him every day, and he would die with it draped over his shoulders and whispering in his ear. 

 

"This isn't the best place to discuss this. Let's go into the living room," Kenny suggested, untying his apron and hanging it on a series of pegs by the door. When Kyle slid a glance at the unfinished embalming job and raised a finger to protest, Kenny waved his concern away. “I don’t have to finish her just yet. I have some time to talk about my friend’s health.”

 

The pair settled into the homely, lavish lounge room up front where Kyle’s bag sat unattended. Kenny took one of the chairs and Kyle, thankfully, found himself sinking into the massive cushions of the couch he reveled in earlier. He was right—it was more comfortable than he could have imagined. Kenny crossed his legs and folded his hands over his knee in a very offhanded but nevertheless curt position, his gold cuff links gleaming in the wan light the nearby table lamp exuded. Kyle recognized this as the sitting stance of many white-collar trade professionals he’d met over the years, and it found it bizarre that Kenny was now one of them.

 

In spite of the grave air about them, Kyle couldn’t help but smile. “It’s weird to see you in a three-piece suit,” he said, his voice so empty he could hear it echo.

 

“I’ve always expected to see you in a lab coat,” Kenny rejoindered. For a moment, he returned Kyle’s expression, but both faces soon fell.

 

“Kyle, how long does he have?” Kenny whispered.

 

“I… we can’t know for sure,” Kyle answered. “He’s been in hospice care for the last six months, which is a typical duration, but he may hang on beyond that. I can’t be certain. He’s declined steadily. He used to have an apartment by our old elementary school, but he was admitted to the nursing home about three months ago.” Kyle remembered that day with dourness. Stan had pleaded in a moment of lucidity with Kyle to let him keep his home and not surrender to skilled nursing—giving up, in Stan’s eyes. Then, his distress dissolved in an instant as he studied the movers milling about, packing boxes, and then turned to Kyle and happily offered his “new guest” a cup of coffee. His hands were already gnarled by then, so he couldn’t even brew some anymore.

 

Kenny swallowed. “Kyle, I’m too busy to take time to see anyone privately… outside of work, anyhow. I want to pay him a visit, but I’m not like you. I don’t know if I’d be able to handle seeing him. What is he like now?”

 

Kyle’s throat was closed. He couldn’t even breathe properly. “He’s… he’s bedridden. The Parkinson’s rigor has ruined his limbs. He doesn’t recognize anyone.” _I don’t even know if he recognizes me anymore._ Something inside Kyle wanted to hold steadfast to the hope that he did—that the small gleams of joy or interest in his friend’s eyes were of genuine understanding. He swore they were. He would swear until his friend was nothing more than a wounded, gaping shell.

 

_Why do I feel like this is all my fault?_

“I promise you, if he has as little time as you say, I’ll do my best to take care of all his final arrangements,” Kenny reassured. “As long as a family member of his comes to me, I can—“

 

“Kenny, he doesn’t have any family,” Kyle snapped, inadvertently angry. “Shelly hasn’t contacted him since she went off to university, and his parents… you know what happened to his parents.” Kyle didn’t want to talk anymore. He felt like an infant with his reticence and displaced rage.

 

Kenny assessed him coolly. He was accustomed to outbursts from the bereaved, even the loved ones of people who hadn’t passed yet. “We both know what happened to them,” he said, “but Kyle, you need to let that go.”

 

“Shut up.” Kyle was rigid, his voice stony.

 

“You have to realize that it wasn’t your fault.”

 

“Shut. Up.” He was seventeen again. Kyle bit his lip. “Please, Kenny. Stop it.”

 

Kenny sighed. There was no getting through to his friend. The repressed memories were too much—memories that were surfacing now that Stan approached the end of his life. Kenny saw that trauma was common among those close to the dying and deceased—he’d studied that briefly in his psychology courses. “Does Stan have any last wishes?” he asked. “Any that you knew of previously, of course. I’ll see that they’re carried out.”

 

“Last wishes?” Kyle repeated, a scratch on a compact disk. “Last wishes.” The unpleasant memories of a decade ago, engulfed in heat and shrieking, was replaced with the more recent solemn ticking of the cuckoo clock that used to be in Stan’s apartment. He was sitting adjacent to his best friend, Stan’s quivering hands encompassing his. Holding Kyle’s fingers in his weak, shaky grip, Stan looked at him with those big blue eyes and spoke to him meaningfully, his words made solid by the sound of passing time behind them.

 

 _Tick. Tock._ One second closer to the end.

 

_Kyle, I need to tell you something._

 

“I…”


End file.
